Word: colombo
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi emerged from the President's House in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo last week, he had reason to smile. The previous day the Prime Minister had signed an agreement with Sri Lankan President Junius R. Jayewardene that promised to end a brutal civil war. But as Gandhi passed the white-uniformed men of a Sri Lankan naval honor guard, one of the sailors broke ranks and swung at Gandhi with the butt of his rifle. The Prime Minister caught a glancing blow in the back and stumbled. Guards quickly hustled Gandhi away and hauled...
...agreement was worked out during three weeks of secret talks between New Delhi and Colombo. Its centerpiece was Jayewardene's concession of local rule in two provinces heavily populated by Tamils, who make up one-eighth of the country's 16 million people. In exchange Gandhi, whose country is home to about 50 million Tamils and who has provided refuge and arms to Tamil insurgents fighting the Colombo government, promised to ensure that the rebels would lay down their arms...
Though Jayewardene eased those laws in 1977, hard feelings lingered. Tamil resentment erupted into sporadic violence. In July 1983 one of those incidents catapulted the country into war: after Tamil terrorists ambushed and killed 13 Sri Lankan soldiers, enraged Sinhalese stampeded through Colombo and killed at least 600 Tamils...
Undeterred, Gandhi ordered five of the Indian air force's Soviet-built An- 32 transports, escorted by four French-built Mirage-2000 fighter jets, into Sri Lankan airspace to drop 25 tons of "humanitarian relief supplies" onto Jaffna. Colombo immediately charged that the airlift was a "naked violation of Sri Lanka's sovereignty and independence." India insisted that the move was needed to meet the "continuing deterioration" of Sri Lanka's Tamils, a condition Colombo denies...
...found support and safe haven among the 50 million Tamils living across the strait in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Last week's airlift seemed to indicate that Gandhi was giving in to pressure from Indian Tamils to intervene more actively in Sri Lanka. Said an official in Colombo: "Whatever India may say about humanitarian aid, what they actually wanted was a halt to the offensive. They have done that...